The Ben Mulroney Show - Is there actually an appetite to bring back the Death Penalty in Canada?

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Is there actually an appetite to bring back the Death Penalty in Canada? -Renaming Dundas Square Isn’t Housing Infrastructure with Guest: Mike Moffatt, Economist, Founding Director, PLACE Centre. Co-Host, "Missing Middle" If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is the Mad Mo Rooney Show, but I am Alex Pearson. Great to have you here with us. It's not like riding a bike. Takes a little bit of time to remember. I forgot how to do this already, right? But it is great having you along. And so the question I'm going to ask you, and I'd love to open the phones, because I would love to hear your views, whether or not you think Doug Ford's

being charming, alarming, or is this just Doug Ford being Doug Ford? But what did he say and is he wrong? Toronto Star obtaining a speech made by the premier. This one happening at the London Police Services Chief Scala happened the same day that he called the snap election back on what, January 27th? And yeah, let's just say the premier fell off script, which he does.

And that's generally why a lot of people love Doug Ford is because he says a lot of things that out loud a lot of people would not admit. And so is he saying what some people think or is he outright wrong? But during this sold out gala, Ford was talking a lot about frustration with record violent crime. He was talking about his frustration with judges being too lenient on criminals. He talked about his desire for a tougher criminal code, even wanting to have more power to change things in the criminal code. And so what did he say?

He said, quote, I don't even go 25 years. I send them right to Sparky and then we'll take everything from there. We need to straighten out all these criminals. Sorry for sidetracking. I just had to vent a little bit. Now, I don't sound like Doug Ford, but that is a part of what he said. And of course, he admits himself, look, he's got a penchant for going off script. Even said that his whole campaign team said, don't go off script.

Don't need the headaches. And yet he did. And someone in that room decided, well, I'll get the story out. Right. And that's why you've got to be careful. You don't want to become the story in a campaign if it got to be careful. You don't want to become the story in a campaign if it's the wrong story. You don't want to be taken off message in a campaign. The message Doug Ford wants to talk about is being tough on Trump right now. And so, you know, he's

now at this private event and probably not really thinking that the comments will get out, and maybe he doesn't care. But you know, saying, hey, I'll send them right to Sparky. Not everyone laughed. But if you look at polling on this particular issue, there's 57% of Canadians who actually say, yeah, bring it back, because we got rid, we abolished the death penalty in this country back in 1976. But there are people saying, we've got to bring it back for the worst of the worst. So it's not like Canadians don't have a feeling on this. It might not be what everyone thinks is nice,

but I think there's a huge amount of frustration in this country, seeing people, violent criminals, getting away with whatever they get away with and this complete imbalance of our justices. So I think some of it is frustration that nothing's getting done, that the bad guys and gals are winning. And maybe that's why people would have an appetite for it. Maybe it's the same thing with Ford. He says he's frustrated.

Maybe people are just frustrated. Right. But I think actually more people would be open to this conversation. Maybe it's the same thing with Ford. He says he's frustrated. Maybe people are just frustrated. Right? But I think actually more people would be open to this conversation. Whether you're offended or not, it's not really the case. It's that people in this country actually want to see justice and we're going in that opposite direction. Is this something that's gonna get Doug Ford in trouble?

Or not? Because his office walked it back saying, no, no, no, no, no, we're not in favor of this. I mean, he was just off script, just frustrated. But this will no doubt get a lot of traction. It'll get traction with the opposition because it's not his first time having the cheese fall off the cracker.

Remember he had his hot mic moment with Donald Trump saying, I like that guy, voted for that guy, I want that guy to win. And then he stabbed me in the back. He's had a couple of other hot mic moments. So again, is he just saying what a lot of people think or is he completely offline? And the other thing is, does it end up sticking to him? You know, does this become the distraction?

So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Is he on the wrong track? Or is this something you would agree to? I don't think it'll ever happen. It would be very interesting to see what politician would campaign on this particular issue. But where are you at? 4168706400 or 8888225 talk. Because I will get lots of talk about this and I guarantee it'll be brought up in the debates, one of which of course we're carrying on Monday, 6 30 to 8. And then we'll have our post analysis coverage of it but it will get brought up, right? Does it stick? Let's go to Brad. I'll give you the first kick at the can on this. Hey, Brad. Thank you very much. It's a huge topic. I would hate

to criticize Ford for telling us how he feels. Does everybody agree? Don't know. But why can't we support politicians who actually tell us how they feel? Because there are circumstances where capital punishment is not a bad idea. And I think you're probably thinking of someone like Paul Bernardo. Right. Nope. Did we lose the caller? I think Brad's not with us anymore. But look, I don't think, I think in certain cases, if you bring up a guy like Paul Bernardo, a lot of people would shed a tear. Right?

But there's just no way that a politician would campaign on this. And by the way, remember, Doug Ford didn't actually think anyone heard the comments. So if he wants to own the comments, he would say them in a mic and he would own the comments. But he thought, you know, this is a private room, private, you know, gathering. It's not gonna get out, which of course, that's completely naive in this day and age, right? So again, if you truly believe this,

say it out loud, own it. Let's go to Mark. Morning, Mark. Hey, Alex, the difference between Doug Ford having a hot mic moment versus someone like Trudeau having one is that you mentioned it. Doug Ford says it as it is and that's what kind of polarizes him to a lot of people because he says what a lot of people think. Now you mentioned Paul Bernardo. Well if his transfer to medium security prison

is an indicative of our pathetic justice system, then everyone needs to give their head a shake. On top of that, you've got those girls that beat that poor man, Kenneth Gleedon death, and what did they get, a slap on the wrist? Well, part of that is still in... Our system is a joke. At some point, someone's going to have to do something to revamp it and to make it less appealing for criminals to do their job,

right? Or do what they think is right. When they know they can be put to death for something, let's change it up. What do I know about federal policy? I know that's not a provincial guideline that he can follow.

And if the opposition kind of latches their teeth to that, then they have no idea what they're talking about because he has no jurisdiction if the opposition kind of latches their teeth to that then they have no idea what they're talking about because he has no jurisdiction in the death penalty. No he doesn't. So they can do what they want, they're pulling at straws because they're not going to win the next election and kind of circle back to what you said Doug Ford is as popular as he is because a hot mic moment for him is a regular moment for him and you hear Justin

Trudeau when he talks it it's disinjected. You know that when he talks, everything he says is either a blatant lie or just that dramatic teacher voice that nauseates everybody. Let me jump in. I appreciate the call. The bottom line is it is federal jurisdiction. But again, there's no way you would ever bring this in for young people and make this part of the Youth Justice Act. And by the way, two of those girls still on trial for that, the alleged swarming. But again, how do you have the conversation on this? It's just it would be so polarized.

At this point, I will just be happy. Can we just, if you're sentenced for 25 years, can we just make it 25 years? We'd have more luck giving a hundred year sentence, an actual life sentence, right? But there's no way, if we can't even give consecutive life sentences in this country because judges think people have hope, how are we bringing in something like the death penalty? Just never have it happening.

Hey, Cam. Hello. Hi there, you say what on this? Hey, Cam, can you hear me? Hello? Yep, I got you. Nope, I don't think Cam can hear me. I'm going to put you on hold and hopefully Cam will come back to Cam. Let me go to Daryl.

Hi, Daryl. Morning, Alex. Where are you? Morning, afternoon, you're giving us a talk here. I wasn't expecting this. It was just a surprise. So I'm here. I'm here in the morning, but I will go back to my afternoon. Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. You hear me Alex?

I got you. Can you hear me? Not interesting. All right. So I think we're having a bit of a maybe. Okay. Can you hear me now? Alex, are you on the line? No, I yes, I am. I think. Hold on. We seem to be having some phone issues. All right, let me try a Poor guy gets through but let me try one more and I really hope that I get this. Hey John, can you hear us? Hey, John. Oh Alex. Can you hear me? Yeah, can you hear you? All right. Good. All right Good. I think this is a Doug being Doug and also doing what he does best and saying loudly what the people are thinking.

Quite honestly, Alex, I hope Merritt styles and Bonnie Cromby do take this like a dog with a bone and run with it. Because Doug can say, you know what, you have a problem with me saying that, you must be happy with the amount of crime. We don't need to reinvest in more.

You are completely wrong. It will reveal their true colors. Yeah, well yeah, I mean look, it's two weeks out. I highly doubt it's going to be brought up as a campaign issue, but you know, the bottom line is it's been said so it does become part of the conversation. I don't know, are we even ready to have hard conversations like this? You know, are we mature enough? I don't think we are. Look, I got a couple of calls. I'm gonna come back to them because this is one of those talkers

that people wanna weigh into. So if you've had trouble calling in, we've got the phones, I think, fixed. I think Gord punched something on the table and now things work. And I'm Alex Pearson. It's great to have you on this Friday. Oh gosh, don't we love Fridays?

Yes we do. Oh yes we do. You're my Valentine Friday. I'm getting a little too excited. All right, we are talking about the death penalty. That's a hard turn, right? We go from Valentine's Day to the death penalty. But why are we talking about the death penalty? Because Doug Ford was talking about the death penalty and I don't think he thought that anyone would hear or maybe he did, but the comments now getting to the public Toronto Star reporting it. And again, it sparks this conversation about, well, sparky, which was a word that Doug Ford used saying,

he'd bring back quote unquote sparky, the death penalty, because he's so frustrated with violent crime in this country. Is he wrong? Is he right? Is he right? Is he tapping into appetite for this? Like we haven't had it since 1976. Take a couple more calls on this.

But is Doug Ford right? Wrong? Is this ever going to be a conversation in this country? And yes, we've got the phone issues fixed. We blame Gord today. Well, he said he could be blamed, right? Anyway, all right, we're back in business. Let's go to Darryl. Hi, Darryl.

Good morning, Alex. Good afternoon. Morning, morning, good afternoon. I know, it's just, I thought I'd keep you on your toes. No, I will, I appreciate that. I'm just glad, Darryl, I'm just glad you're listening all day long now, right? You're just following us everywhere. I'm just happy to have you.

I feel like it's kind of an indictment on my personal life. That's right. Well, that's okay. Anyway, Doug Ford is a human equivalent of the word placeholder for the conservative think tanks that put him in place. Sure, he may be saying something that is on the minds of a lot of Canadians or a lot of Ontarians, I guess, but doesn't make it right. And I'm actually not, it's been so much time, but your original question was, is Doug Ford speaking sort of truth to power or can you restate your question for me? I, are you asking me to remember something from five minutes ago on a Friday, Darrell?

Good God, you're very ambitious. I think the question was, you know, is he saying the quiet part out loud? Is this something, is he tapping into the frustration of a lot of people who quietly think that the good, you know, the good guys are losing? That's as good as my memory is getting today. Sorry. Yeah, no, not that. Yes.

Yes, of course he is. Of course he is. There's a lot of people that are very, very frustrated with the state of the criminal justice system here in Canada and rightly so. But that doesn't mean that we should bring back to the death penalty it means that we should install stiffer penalties we should give more power for police to hold on to the offenders. Well that would be great but we can't this is the problem and the frustration here's my question to you Darryl because look you and I go back and forth right but here's the thing and this is why I think it taps into the frustration is that we can't even give out mandatory minimums. Some judges think that's mean.

If we can't even do that. So I think that's part of the frustration buildup. Right. And I don't disagree with you on that point. I think it's silly for us to think that Doug Ford is anything more than the word placeholder. All right. Well, he might be the placeholder for another term. You're good with that? I hope not. I hope not. Not if I have my way and if voting

is actually works this time and people get out and vote instead of just like what 38% of us like last time. Yeah, well you are right there. Hey, have a great Valentine's Day, Darryl. Happy Valentine's, Alex. Thank you very much. All right, there you go. That's Darryl. And Darryl and I don't agree on a lot, right? We agree to disagree on a lot. I just, I'm glad he listens and is willing to have the conversation because that's what this is about.

All right, Cam, I'm going to give you the last word on it. You say what? Well, your reporter, Sam, who's looking into the cartels and- Oh, Sam Cooper. Yeah. He's not my reporter. He's all on his own.

He's a master of his own domain. Okay. So what you have to do is investigate we've done that we know where they are Yeah, okay, then initiate okay, and that's where we're being held up We initiate and then after that it goes through the court system and nothing's done. So Investigate initiate and then kill kill it. Yeah. You guys have no problem killing their customers, especially on the fentanyl issue, okay? You remember the, everybody was caught on Blue Jay Way in a gunfight?

Yep, yep. And the mother and child? I lived in that building for about 10 years, so I know that area very, very well. Yes, I do, yeah. That's right. Unacceptable happening in downtown Toronto. Anybody could have got it yet. So these people don't care. well yes I do yeah that's right unacceptable happening in downtown Toronto anybody could

have got it yet so these people don't care here here's the result of your consequences and make it graduated starting with the death penalty then work its way down and you're going to serve your full term oh yeah all right thank you camp appreciate it the bottom line is I think you know look I don't think anyone I know I wouldn't miss Paul Bernardo, I would not miss Michael Rafferty, who terrorized and tortured and killed Tori Stafford. I wouldn't miss a few of these people. I wouldn't have any problem. But I just don't think it's one of these conversations that will ever come to light. But we absolutely, absolutely have to get more serious

about the penalties. And I think that would alleviate a lot of the stress because it's absolutely, we are being gamed and to the caller's point, there are many, many more sophisticated criminals out there. Sam Cooper, who of course is author of Willful Blindness, he's a regular on my show, he has been uncovering this stuff. We've got a lot of organized crime, very serious violent offenders and they do get away with it. I don't have a lot of time for this one, but I do thank you for your calls on that one. I do want to talk about the coyotes though, right? Cause you know, how do you do a hard turn on that? It's like, do we relocate or do we send those to, do

they send them to Sparky? Is it time to send the coyotes to Sparky? Okay. I'm making this work. And if you want to let, you got like four minutes to give me a show, three minutes, 4168706400, I don't even have time, nevermind, don't call, because I'll get through this. But I don't understand why we're even having a conversation about this. These coyotes in Liberty Village, right?

You've got these residents, they had six coyote attacks in one night. Why are we discussing this? These are not like the road runner. It's not cute. It's not a cartoon. For months, these residents have been absolutely tortured and dealing with these aggressive coyotes.

They've already recorded 40 coyote attacks since November 3rd, three dogs dead. Several have been attacked. And so again, on Monday night you're dealing with six attacks. The city councilor is trying to do a relocation program. This is not the witness protection program. They come back. But what does it take to be serious about this? I love animals. Okay. But coyotes are a different breed. And once they've got the taste of blood, they're coming back and they're going to keep coming back. And they are coming back. But at what point, because this to me is just the basics of common sense for City Hall. Like, do they really need the headline that a child's been attacked

or worse? Do they really need to hear a story about a person being attacked and maimed? Because that's what it's coming to. How many warnings do they need to know about Wile E. Coyote before they actually start to use their head and send the coyotes to Sparky? I'm just saying. We've talked about this enough and warned enough and the talk should stop. You got to call the coyotes. I am Alex Pearson and I am in for Mr. Ben Mulroney.

Ben Mulroney will be in for Mr. John Oakley. We thought we'd keep you on your toes on this Friday. So it is great to have you here. I want to talk about something that I think a lot of us have questions about and you know, we want the answers as to like, why don't we have more housing? And that could be because we're not actually throwing everything that we can at it. And Toronto charges some of the highest development fees and municipality taxes. And when I started to look through the numbers, I was actually quite shocked by it, but a one bedroom condo has now gone up from 37,000 in August of 2023 to 52,675 bucks.

That's since 2010, that's 993% increase. If you want to build a single detached home, 12,000 bucks in development fees and municipality taxes back in 2010. Now 141, thousand in 2024. And so if you're ever wondering, you know, why homes are unaffordable, that's what we're looking at. So we're penalizing new buyers and then we're standing the way of building homes as quickly and cheaply as possible. So why are the fees that the builders have to pay, why are they not only being used to build more housing and why are they going for things like pet projects? And in particular we'll name like the Sankofa Square. Why are things

like development fees and municipality taxes going to pay for that? That's a complete waste of money because don't forget the Toronto mayor said we're not going to use public money for that. No taxpayer money will go to that. And so look, the reason we justify charging these fees is that growth should pay for growth. But then that means all the money has to go into that, to building or improving immediate infrastructure to the community, not into side projects. So why is it happening? Let's ask someone who's been looking into this, certainly Mike Moffat, economist, founding director

of Playcentre, also cohost of The Missing Middle. Thanks so much, Mike, for joining. Thank you for having me. I think it's great that you've really kind of dove into this issue because I don't think most people, including myself, understand how much these fees have gone up and how much it's staying in the way of achieving ownership, right?

But then I think we all just assume municipalities are putting all these fees towards the building. So to suggest, sorry, my mouth isn't working today, to suggest that Toronto is spending money on other things, likely other municipalities are too. Have you been able to find out how widespread this is? Yeah, it's pretty common. We're working on collecting data

from a bunch of different municipalities, but every municipality puts out something called a treasurer statement on what they spend this money on. And you go through it and you find some pretty egregious examples. We highlight three in a recent article, but we've got a dozen more. So this is a very common practice. Do we know how much would be then, like if we are looking into this, I have a feeling that no one has bothered to tally up just how much opportunity has been

wasted, right? Because if actually all the money was going towards what it's supposed to, how much further ahead would we be? Yeah, absolutely. It can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a home. We don't really know in part because municipalities aren't great at publishing these data in a timely way, in a way that's comparable so we can compare say Toronto to Mississauga.

So our team is trying to do some of that work, but it's made incredibly difficult due to a lack of transparency. Well, right. And that is always the way, right? If you want to fix something, you've actually got to go and build the case, but it's so hard to build the case because when you try to get the accountability and put the numbers together, it's always really hard to find all the data because governments and they all do it, will only put forward the data that I think favors them. And so again, we look back to 2010 and it was actually quite reasonable by those standards,

you know, 12,000 to build a single detached home and fees, but to see it go as high as it has and to suggest in 2025. Now we're starting to see like, hey, this is out of control. Again, if I'm if I'm building and I'm in that area of expertise, I'd be so frustrated with this. It would make me not want to do anything here. Yeah, absolutely. That it's a couple hundred thousand dollars, you know, that's added to the home because you mentioned development charges, but that's not the only municipal tax. You know, there's things like community benefit charges and a kind of alphabet soup of other

taxes. So it adds a lot. And these are paid for by the developer, at least in theory, but they get incorporated into the final price, the same way a builder incorporates the price of drywall or screws, or an hour of an electrician's time. So what happens is not only did they get embedded into the price, but the final buyer or renter

ends up paying GST or land transfer taxes on top of that. So not only are these taxes going up, but there's a tax on tax here as well. So hold on, let me just clarify that because the data that I'm saying, you know, like the $12,000 versus the $141,000 in fees in 2024, would that not include the land transfer on top of that,

like for Toronto and the provincial, like that's an extra cost? That's an extra cost. So let's say you build. Yeah, absolutely. So let's say you build a single detached home, you pay $140,000 on those development charges. Then you're paying 8% PST on top of that, 5% GST,

and then you're paying both a provincial and a municipal land transfer tax. So it inflates those numbers an extra 20 to 25% because of that tax on a tax. So you're adding probably an extra $30,000, $35,000 on top of that. Yeah, it's crazy. But you think about what the government can do and what the government likes to tell us that they'll do, right? They have our backs. It's that they choose not to because if I were a politician and I'm not I'd be a terrible one but I would say you know for first-time

owners don't pay the the I'd give you a break on land transfer tax these are things that they have a choice of making and yet they don't and the fees just keep going higher and higher so I look at this and I say okay government has a choice and they're making these choices. Yeah, they really are. And in some of those examples, we find that the choice that they're making is they're trying to bury controversial spending in things like development charges,

another charge called Section 37, as a way to tell people, no, no, taxpayers aren't paying for this initiative. It's coming out of this other pot of money. But at the end of the day, you know, that other pot of money is paid for by taxpayers, is paid by new owners and new renters and so on. So what's been happening is, you know, instead of, you know, having a real debate about the merits of any particular piece of spending, it gets buried into these side funds that generally speaking have a lot less scrutiny. Right, and so what could we do immediately, Mike,

to start reversing this? Well, I think the first thing that we need to do is put more limits on how these funds are used. So, you know, that Section 37 money that's used to rename the square, you know, that was money you designed that, you know, if you're building an apartment building and you want to add a couple more stories,

you put some money into this fund. And it's supposed to be used to buy like playground equipment or things like that. Just go more people need more things. I think we need to narrow the scope of the spending and go back to the nice know, the nice to have, or the must haves and eliminate the nice to haves. Or just name and shame and then until they stop doing it, right?

But it's, it's a really eye opening report that you write. And certainly when you add up the numbers, it's all against those trying to get into the market. I appreciate your time, Mike. Yeah, thank you for having me. Daniel Blanchard is no ordinary thief. His heists are ingenious. His escapes defy belief. And when he sees the dazzling diamond CC Star, he'll risk everything to steal it.

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